Thursday, June 30, 2011

We Can’t Let Go Of Him Day!

Everyone in your little podunk town is trying to kill you because they heard you got into one of those colleges up north where they teach you communications and how to flirt with Jewish girls by speaking heatedly about politics.

“So it’s agreed,” the senior councilman said last night at the Town Center. “We kill him before he gets on that bus tomorrow morning. We’re a jealous folk here in our simple little town, and if we can’t have him, no one can.”

“Perhaps we should do it tonight,” the town mailman said.

“Nope,” the senior councilman responded. “Too sleepy. Had a big dinner.”

That was your big break. Wake up early this morning, pack your bags, then go house to house murdering everyone in your town before getting on the bus to Villanova. Your town has a population of 865, so you have to kill 4.8 people per minute to make your bus in three hours. Use fire. Make sure you get everybody because if you leave any living witnesses, they could come to Villanova and kill everyone on campus out of vengeance.

Congratulations on being the ninth person in your town to get into college. Now let’s work on you being the first one to get out of that town alive.

Happy We Can’t Let Go Of Him Day!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Party Store Owner Discovers The Irony Of Being A Party Store Owner Who Could Never Throw A Party Of His Own Because He Doesn’t Have Any Friends Because He’s Awful Day!

Today the Party Store owner is going to chuckle to himself when he realizes that even though he has an entire store full of party supplies at his disposal, having not a single friend to his name means he doesn’t have the capability of throwing a party.

“Funny,” the Party Store owner thinks. “That I, of all people, would own a party store after having spent my whole life being such a miserable human being that I don’t have a single friend who would come to a party I threw. Come to think of it, I’ve never attended a party, unless you count that neighbor’s backyard wedding I watched from my bathroom window after calling the police with a noise complaint. I wouldn’t have even watched that if I didn’t want to see their faces the moment the police told them they had to take it inside. Man, me, a Party Store owner. Life sure does work in weird ways.”

Irony sufficiently acknowledged, the Party Store owner then starts going through job applications so he can throw some candidates in the trash based on the apparent ethnicity of their last names.

Happy Party Store Owner Discovers The Irony Of Being A Party Store Owner Who Could Never Throw A Party Of His Own Because He Doesn’t Have Any Friends Because He’s Awful Day!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Under A Red Lamp Day!

You’re sitting under a red lamp, chewing on a ten-day old cigar, telling your son what love really means, when the men come in to the restaurant to make you pay.

“Love really means being disappointed. Disappointed in your own heart for not being able to give enough of itself. Disappointed that your lover can’t make everything okay, that she can’t make you forget all about where you expected to be at this point in your life. Disappointed that love isn’t all you need. Disappointed that love’s all you have.”

“You killed Mom, didn’t you?”

“She was talking to the Feds.”

Two of Mack Leland’s soldiers just opened their rain coats and leveled shotgun barrels at your head. One of them moves his eyes from yours to your son. He’s giving you the split-second you need to slap your son to the ground before the triggers are pulled. You take advantage of his consideration, throw your son safely to the ground, and then you accept their gunfire readily and without rebuttal.

You die reasonably content. You at least got around to telling your son what love really is. You never got to tall him about the time you saw a ghost when you were in the war, but no one ever died without a few items left on their to-do list.

Happy Under A Red Lamp Day!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

One Of Those Photos With The Girl Who Got Her Face Impaled On A Fence Day!

You have trouble dating because you were in one of those photos of a girl who got her face impaled on a wrought-iron fence.

“I just can’t get over the idea that we’ve met before,” boys will say. “And I get uneasy when I look at you. Did you once hurt me?”

When it’s clear they won’t let it go you have no choice but to tell them.

“I was in one of those photos of a girl who got her face impaled on a wrought-iron fence,” you tell them. You describe the photo, wherein the spike at the top of the fence had gone through the skin underneath your chin so that the spike was sticking out of your mouth.

“Aww God that’s it!” the boys shout. “Aww God! Aww my God! I remember that photo. Aww God!”

And that’s how it ends. You can be sure that from that point on every time they look at you they’ll be imagining you with a spike piercing your chin and sticking out of your mouth and they’ll be thinking “Aww God!” and wanting to cover their eyes. So you tell them the story of how the spike had to be sawed from the fence so that you could be lifted off of its base and rushed to the hospital, and then you say goodbye forever and log back onto OkCupid.

Today you’re going to go on a date with a guy who was in one of those videos where he dove off the roof into a pool but landed face first on the concrete perimeter instead.

“Aww God!” you’ll shout. You’ll tell him about your wrought-iron fence situation and he’ll shout “Aww God!”

Since you both remind each other of cringeworthy visuals of unimaginable pain you decide to marry and spend the rest of your lives looking at each other through your fingers, unable to put the horrible images out of your heads. Every morning when you wake up and see each other across the bed, you’ll ask each other once again, “So did it hurt real bad?” Then you’ll kiss and make coffee.

Happy One Of Those Photos With The Girl Who Got Her Face Impaled On A Fence Day!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Present For Your New Dad Day!

Your new Dad has been in the house for just a few weeks but he’s really hinting for a present from you for Father’s Day.

“I know I’m not your real dad,” he keeps saying. “So I get that you wouldn’t wanna give me nothing for Father’s Day. But I could also see how you might have missed having a Dad around to give something to on Father’s Day so if you wanted to give me something, The Panther wouldn’t give it back to you or anything. Just saying.”

Since you were already planning on running away from home tonight, you should redraft your goodbye note so that it seems like you always intended for it to be an early Father’s Day present.

“Dear Mom and Panther,” write. “I know that I don’t belong here anymore so I’m running away to Hollywood to try and be an aspiring child prostitute. Panther, I hope you enjoy the extra space around the house that I’m giving to you. Happy Father’s Day. Mom, I hope you’ll be very happy spending your life with a man who calls himself Panther.”

After you go, Panther will read the letter and say, “The Panther’s gonna cry Panther tears. The Panther just got a father’s day present. He remembered to resepct the Panther.”

Your Mom will say to her new husband, “Before we go chasing after him, why do you call yourself The Panther anyway?”

The Panther will jump away from her and crouch in the corner, making cat noises. Your Mom will argue that he just sounds like a housecat, but The Panther won’t break character, not even while your mom calls the police about your Father’s Day present.

Happy Present For Your New Dad Day!

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Salads N’ Food Day!

Today at lunch when you sit down at Salads N’ Food, pull a handgun out of your bag and drop it into the salad, then go back to the salad station and tell the salad maker you found a handgun in your salad. He’ll say he doesn’t know how it happened. Tell the manager that his salad maker intended the handgun for someone else in the restaurant, and he was clearly planning an uprising. The manager will lock the door and keep everyone inside until he finds out who was the salad maker’s accomplice in the effort to overthrow the Salads N’ Food. The manager will start killing those he suspects were involved and It will take up most of the afternoon and all of you will remain friends for life because that’s what happens to people who were in the same Salad N’ Food when they saw innocent people die.

Happy Salads N’ Food Day!

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

You’re Five Day!

Today you’re five and you love matches. You love the way they feel in your hand, the way they smell, and especially, the way they start big, luscious, proudly raging fires that swallow anything and everything that might have the misfortune of residing in their path. When you use your matches to set fire to and destroy a small restaurant, leveling the dreams of a man who spent most of his twenties and thirties setting aside savings and making connections with people in the community and established businessmen to help him make his dream of one day owning a restaurant come true, the man will come to you and tell you he’s not angry - even though you can tell he is, and that he’s been crying - that he knows you’re too young to know better, so he just wants you to promise him that you’ll never play with matches again.

“I promise,” tell him, because this is what you have to do every time you play with matches and some adult decides that he can make you stop, that he has more power over you than the matches, and the fire, that beautiful, ever lovely fire. “I promise to never play with matches again.”

The man will go back to staring at the ashes of his hard work, unaware that if you actually had any intention of following through on your promise, you wouldn’t want to turn six.

Happy You’re Five Day!

Monday, June 06, 2011

Couples Jump Day!

Couples fresh in new love jump to their deaths hand-in-hand today and does the evening news bother to say a word about it? The TV doesn’t concern itself with those Americans so consumed with each other they sprint crazily from rooftops to the ground below. They only report on the resulting gridlock as Dads drive home from work rubbernecking, remembering those seven months twenty years prior when they wanted to pull their women close and leap twenty stories, putting an end to the world before the feeling fades.

In sports, the Grizzlies.

Happens every day in neighborhoods you might be too scared to visit, and neighborhoods you might hope to live in one day if that raise ever finds your paycheck. Dozens in the winter, hundreds in the spring. Littering the concrete with the mingling blood and bone of two human beings out of a billion who found each other. It was impossible but the puddle and the side by side body bags proves it happened. Too bad the news vans are all parked outside the house where the little blonde girl was kidnapped.

Only 14 years old. An honor student, beautiful Heather.

Good people don’t like to hear bad stories. People have to go to work in the morning. They don’t want to remember that they once had the chance to enter the infinite with hearts fat with gratitude that someone else on this planet exists. They want to know if it’s going to rain or if their baby stroller is hazardous.

Forget that raincoat.

No one cares if another new love falls out of the sky. It happens and it’ll keep happening and people don’t like to hear about it so it’s really not worth reporting.

Happy Couples Jump Day!